Fred rang me one crisp early morning. Let's go down to the beach. It was bitterly cold but undaunted I hopped into my SUV and he hopped into his pose-mobile and off we zoomed from our respective domiciles. A few short hours later we arrived at the beach and what a blooming cold day it was too. I think we spent all of about 10 minutes on the beach, at severe risk of frostbite. See how well wrapped-up other beachgoers were!
The sky was pretty clear and made the biting cold of the day even more penetrating than normal.
The cold didn't seem to be affecting the flowers though had I been a flower I assure you I would have been withered, wrinkly and dried-up by the intensity of the cold. Global warming is nonsense - we're in the middle of the new Ice Age.
Needless to say, this wasn't the longest day trip ever. I think the drive was far longer than the time spent at the beach. Now the drive back was quite interesting...
On the way back I paused for fuel in Orangeburg or near Orangeburg. There was a crossroads with a different filling station on almost every corner. The first filling station didn't have a functioning card swiper and judging from the lowlife hanging around in the shadows, I didn't feel like going in to the building to pay so I moved onto the next filling station on the next corner. That didn't even have a card swiper on the pumps so after ascertaining that none of the pumps had one, I moved onto the last filling station and filled up. On my way out of Orangeburg or wherever it was, it felt like one of the small towns from the Wild West, I saw a barber-shop sign that declared the shop to be "Bad Haircuts". Enough said - if I was a haircut then I want a good one. Clearly this little town is well worth avoiding. In fact I was in such haste to depart that I never took any photos though perhaps this was the safer option anyhow.
Driving both was was quite an education in people's bad driving. Indicating left to move to the middle lane, I was almost side-swiped by somebody in a ratty-old blue car going past me from the rear, far left lane (despite my indicators) at way over the speed limit to pass me and pull into the right-hand lane, cutting in front of me. Then there was the guy in the orange car doing 40mph in a 65mph zone where the legal minimum was posted as 45mph. People were queuing to dart past him with at least a lane between him and them as he was weaving between the right and middle lanes with no apparent pattern to his behavior. Yes, folks, some drivers in America do invite drive-by shootings. I wonder if bad driving is why so many folks do get shot at the wheel.